Behind the Legend is a series that will teach you new things, make you laugh and help you discover in a fun way, people that played a very important role in our history. Sit comfortably and enjoy today's article.
Meet the filthy peasant mystic who somehow ended up running Russia.
Let's set the scene. It's 1905. Russia is a mess — losing wars, starving peasants, an increasingly paranoid Tsar. Into this chaos walks a tall, wild-eyed Siberian peasant with a beard you could lose a cat in and the personal hygiene of a compost bin. He smells. Badly. Witnesses described it as a notable feature of his presence.
His name was Grigori Rasputin. And within two years, he would become arguably the most powerful unofficial person in the Russian Empire.
How? Great question.
Step 1: Find a Royal Family With a Very Sick Child
Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra had a son — Alexei — who suffered from haemophilia. In 1905, this was basically a death sentence on a slow timer. The kid would bleed internally from the smallest bump and there was nothing medicine could do.
Here comes Rasputin.
Nobody knows exactly what he did. Some historians think he hypnotized the boy. Others think he told the doctors to stop giving Alexei aspirin — which, it turns out, is a blood thinner, so the doctors were accidentally making it worse. Whatever the mechanism, when Rasputin showed up, Alexei got better.
Alexandra was, understandably, obsessed with him after that.
Step 2: Become Untouchable
Here's the thing about Rasputin: he was not subtle. He drank. Constantly. He slept around. Publicly. He wandered into fancy restaurants in his peasant robes, got hammered, and groped noblewomen while ministers watched in horror. He bragged that the Tsarina was "his." He inserted himself into political appointments. He had opinions on military strategy during World War I — a war he was not in any way qualified to comment on.
The aristocracy despised him. They called him "the dark force." They wrote letters. They complained. They begged Nicholas to get rid of him.
Nicholas, to his credit, tried a couple of times. He kept sending Rasputin away.
Then Alexei would have a crisis. Alexandra would panic. And Rasputin would be back within weeks.
Step 3: Survive Your Own Murder (Multiple Times)
By 1914, a woman named Khioniya Guseva stabbed Rasputin in the stomach in the street. He survived.
By 1916, a group of nobles decided enough was enough. Prince Felix Yusupov — one of the richest men in Russia, which is saying something — organized a proper assassination. The plan was elegant: invite Rasputin over, feed him poisoned food and wine, watch him die, dispose of body.
What actually happened:
Rasputin ate the cyanide-laced cakes. He drank the cyanide-laced wine. He then asked for more wine. He was not dying. He asked if there was a guitar around because he wanted to sing.
Yusupov, panicking, shot him in the back.
Rasputin fell. They checked the body. Dead, obviously.
Then Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Yusupov by the throat, and chased him across the room.
He made it out into the courtyard before being shot three more times, beaten with a club, and — just to be safe — tied up and thrown into a frozen river.
The autopsy showed water in his lungs.
The man drowned.
The Aftermath
Rasputin died on December 30, 1916. The Russian Revolution came three months later. The royal family was executed in 1918.
Rasputin had, in fact, predicted all of it in a letter he wrote shortly before his death — warning that if he was killed by nobles, the Tsar and his family would not survive more than two years.
He was right. Which is either impressive historical analysis or the most on-brand final move possible.
What do we actually learn from Rasputin?
That access is everything. Rasputin had zero formal power — no title, no office, no army. He had one relationship that mattered, and he made himself irreplaceable to the person who had it. He built a monopoly on something the Empress desperately needed and refused to be removable.
Also: if you're going to poison someone, use more poison.
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-Geor-